-Scroll.in India’s first chief statistician, Pronab Sen, is now country director of the International Growth Centre, which seeks to build effective growth facilities through engagement between policymakers and researchers. In this interview to Scroll.in, he speaks on the 50 days of demonetisation, its failings, its severe impact on the poor, the loss of credibility of the Reserve Bank of India, the push to make India a cashless or less-cash economy, and...

-Livemint.com Economist Esther Duflo on demonetisation impact, role of randomized control trials in policymaking, low priority assigned to health and education in India New Delhi: India’s demonetisation of high-value currency notes is a dramatic example of a policy announcement made without any serious thought given to implementation, said Esther Duflo, one of the leading development economists of the world and a professor at the department of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The income tax department has identified an additional 67.54 lakh non-filers who carried out high-value transactions in the 2014-15 financial year, but did not file tax returns for 2015-16. The I-T department is set to initiate action against these people soon. The information was collected from banks and other financial institutions. Data analysis carried out by the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) identifies non-filers about whom specific...

-The Hindu ILO finds women form 60% of lowest paid wage labour, but only 15% of highest wage-earners India had among the worst levels of gender wage disparity — men earning more than women in similar jobs — with the gap exceeding 30 per cent, the Global Wage Report 2016-17 released by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) revealed last week. In contrast, Singapore had among the lowest, at 3 per cent. Among major...

-The Hindu The unorganised manufacturing sector should be reoriented towards non-household units to provide efficiency gains. Ever since E.F. Schumacher, a British economist, published in 1973 his book Small is Beautiful, implying that small units are better in terms of performance indicators and labour absorption, several studies have endorsed the same idea and argued in favour of promoting small units. Stretching the argument a little further, it may be emphasised that small...